Warmongers
by Monoshiri
Summary: Five years before the start of "Naruto", Sound arranges an ambush against a caravan from Sand; and from opposite sides, the Sound Four and the children of the Kazekage taste battle. Gen, action, now with bonus Akatsuki.
1. Chapter 1

**Warmongers **_(Part 1 of 3)_

* * *

Sounds flickered and spread out, over and around the edge of the canyon of Asaguri. They made camp there with little fuss, quickly, not a cooking fire to be seen.

Ijou found himself eyeing the badlands around them often, nonetheless. It was much too quiet even for a ninja encampment.

"Natural terrain don't ever keep its natural rhythms when there's humans around, boyo," Umebogyo let him know, a faint curl of smoke escaping his nostrils as he spoke. Umebogyo was the oldest man in the Eastern division of Oto, and according to rumour, had stabbed his Cloud captain in the eye with a smile when he'd judged the man's performance sub-par, then walked out and sold his services to Orochimaru. By default, this made him the leader. Umebogyo also smoked profusely by way of a long-stemmed pipe, but Ijou had seen smoke curling out of the corners of the man's mouth and from his nose even when he hadn't touched the pipe in hours.

The other Sound ninjas did not feel particularly safe in Umebogyo's presence, but he had been around long enough that the security of the commonplace emanated from him like his tobacco smell.

Ijou didn't even trust the security of the commonplace. He was technically assigned to the Southern division, but as a field medic he was a floating agent, and he'd been everywhere with everyone and knew the wild rumours were all true. He'd had to run for his life from a screaming, mobile-tattooed fiend who'd pounded his escorts into bloody pulps of bone and flesh, and that wasn't even the worst of what was in the dark corners of the Sound's hidden bases.

So he made himself tea from a packet and sat and listened intently as Umebogyo outlined the maneuver for his immediate subordinates; he was in on it in case some tit stabbed themselves in the eye, because this mission was relatively straightforward.

"...'s going to be a bit peculiar, see, being as how we're expecting 'em to come up on the left side of the cliffs. Think you can handle it, Houki?"

"Piece of cake." Houki was absently picking his teeth with a kunai; the gesture was pure bravado, picked up from his time as a missing-nin on the edges of Wind country, and Ijou had to suppress a medical lecture every time he saw the man putting _used_steel near his sensitive gums. It was not only disgusting but unsanitary, and probably wasn't helping Houki's halitosis any. "I never liked the Kazekage much, so it'll be a real pleasure to put one in the gut of his daimyo's best retainer, never mind some of his upper-level jounin."

"Oh dear me, Houki, you never mentioned it was personal," purred one of the two women in the corner of the tent. Unlike the rest of the party, who wore the utilitarian Sound tunic and leggings, she was garbed in an elaborate cream kimono and ceremonial geta. She had also taken pains, with her dyed-black hair and flawless makeup, to hide what Ijou and the others knew anyway: Utagatta Mimiko, former geisha and mistress of sonic-based genjutsu and ninjutsu, was _far_older than Umebogyo and possibly even more dangerous. "Are you quite certain you can trust him with his party's leadership?"

"Not that it's any of your business, wench," Umebogyo said coolly, "but I been through this with Houki already. If that eagerness turns out to be a liability, I'll cut him open and throttle him with his own entrails." He turned a snaggle-toothed grin on the man in question. "Innat right?"

"What he said."

"Charming," Mimiko murmured. "And now for my other concern; this is _quite_a lot of shinobi for just one ambush mission. Isn't my lord Orochimaru overdoing it a tad?"

"Insurance," snapped the other woman in the tent, Hirune, a thin blonde with a sour mouth. "Wants to make sure, in case there's surprises, you know? Don't question the giant snake. He knows what he's doing."

Ijou cocked his head slightly and darted a glance at Umebogyo, who remained impassive.

"Of course, of course," Mimiko said demurely, "I was merely curious. Of course I would never question my lord Orochimaru's judgment."

_Not in front of a political, you wouldn't, _Ijou said to himself. _That informal slip was a little warning; Hirune's not just some newbie from the western base, she's part of the inner circle, here to make sure nothing and nobody gets out of hand._

"You aren't even in on this, Iron Koto," Houki growled absently at her, mercifully putting his teeth-picking kunai away as he spoke. "You're on rendezvous with Orochimaru himself and his newest little pet, the one from Mist that doesn't want to come along quietly. What do you care about this mission?"

"Oh dear, to be honest, all of you could die horribly and it wouldn't matter to me in the slightest," Mimiko said with a disturbingly sweet smile. "I simply don't want to have to be the bearer of bad news to my lord Orochimaru if it all goes wrong."

"Don't you be worrying your pretty head about us, Granny," Umebogyo said with a chuckle, and for the first time Mimiko's sculpted smile vanished and a look of pure hate flashed across her painted features, nostrils flaring ever so slightly, mouth twitching downwards. It was gone in a second, of course, but there it was: lacey words and simpering were all just there to hide the fact that the kunoichi was still a killer for hire. "You can tell Orochimaru there's nothing of this group we can't handle: two big names into the party, the rest hardened but nothin' on our hard ladies an' gents. Well, everyone's had their piece so far...Ijou, got anything to say?"

"I'd prefer to keep the casualties to a minimum. On our side, anyway."

"Listen to the medical specialist, boys an' girls, an' don't get yourselves killed. Now that we're all sorted, let's—"

Someone knocked the tent flap back, sending wind eddies and sand scurrying into the makeshift war room. Spitting and blinking, everyone looked up at the new arrival. And up.

"It is _fuckshit _cold out there, why don't you bastards have a fire going?"

Houki dashed sand from his eyes, face crinkled in annoyance. "What the—_Mizumomo? _What're you doing showing up here? You're not wanted!"

He caught dirty looks from both Hirune and Umebogyo for that, but Tokage Mizumomo had already seated herself on the packed tent floor crosslegged and was dumping copious amounts of sand out of the detachable parts of her armour. Mimiko's face had gone suspiciously blank. Ijou, having taken note of the reactions, sized the woman up: she was one of the few higher-rankers he'd heard of but never encountered, and there weren't a lot of those, given he'd worked with Kabuto and Orochimaru himself. Big, he'd heard, build like a brick house, armoured herself like a tank. Mask-wearer: ugly, some said, too beautiful to allow her face to be seen, said others. They all agreed that she was trouble if you crossed her, a good hand to have on your side if you didn't. One of the lower high-rankers, and insubordinate, but she'd been places and seen things, and Orochimaru tolerated her because she was skilled and devoted. After that, things got fuzzy, rumour mixing up with half-truths, talk thrown up like she'd killed her entire bloodline limited clan and eaten the bodies.

Ijou reminded himself that the wild rumours were usually true, watching as the last living member of the Tokage clan shook sand out of her shoes and cursed creatively under her breath. In this case, though, the woman looked up at him with dour, narrow eyes, and the overwhelming impression Ijou got was one of practicality; it struck him that Mizumomo was the kind of person who would judge cannibalistic mass parricide a waste of her good time.

"Hey, corpsefucker, what're you staring at?"

Ijou blinked. "Ah. Sorry. I was thinking about something else." He bit the inside of his lip as soon as those dour eyes were off him. _Corpsefucker? _He wasn't even part of the undertaker squad, for heaven's sake!

"Keep your mind on what's in front of you, then, corpsefucker, or you won't live."

"You tell 'im, hag," chortled Umebogyo, who'd clearly gotten over his surprise. "Nice surprise seein' your ugly face hereabout."

"Hn, good to see you too, old bastard. Rank and wrinkled as ever."

Hirune was tapping her chin with faint impatience; she stopped when Mizumomo's eyes flicked over to her. "Mm, so there y'are. Brought 'em?"

Mizumomo seemed to consider Hirune for a few seconds, then shifted her attention entirely to Umebogyo as though the blonde political wasn't even there. "Should've radioed ahead with the news, old bastard, but I'm here with intel and some raw brats."

"Really? Intel first, then."

"There's a jinchuuriki with the caravan."

In another group there might have been consternation. As it was, the upper level Sound shinobi were so wary of one another and of appearing weak that they merely digested this in silence. Ijou himself, not being fairly high up, felt his stomach lurch anyway.

"_What?"_

"I just said, a jinchuuriki. Not one of the stronger ones, and it's immature. 'S why I'm here. That said, even with the numbers we have we'll be stretched thin."

Umebogyo threaded his bony fingers together under his chin and looked at nothing. Houki fidgeted.

"We could kill it…"

"Don't make stupid talk," Umebogyo said absently, "we'll be lucky if we get away with no dead men on this one. I tells you what: leave the jinchuuriki to me, I'll distract him. The rest of you, and the senior jounin and chuunin, will have to handle that Taruru woman and Baki of the wind blades yerselves."

Mimiko had been developing a slow, nasty smile over the last few minutes, ever since Mizumomo had brought up the jinchuuriki. "My, my...a shame I can't stay and watch these goings-on. One of you is bound to die during this, rather impressively I'm sure."

"If you haven't got something useful to add, go fuck yourself," Mizumomo spat at the older woman, whose smile merely widened. It was, Ijou realized, clear enough who Mimiko was hoping would get taken out. "And as for the raw brats, you lot know about lord Orochimaru's Four?"

Clearly, Houki, Umebogyo, and Hirune did, given the dubious expressions they all assumed. Mimiko simply gave a high, scornful titter. Ijou attempted to dredge his memory; he'd heard the squad name before, but...

"Might well bring 'em in here," Umebogyo said at last. "Where are they?"

In answer, Mizumomo rose and yanked open the tent flap, poking her head out into the chill air and barking incomprehensible and possible obscenity-laced orders _sotto voce. _Apparently this was good enough for her "brats", because they came filing into the tent one by one.

Ijou had not, he realized, been with Sound long enough, because he choked down a cry of protest. Except for the rotund orange-haired boy ending the group, who was a little large perhaps for his age, they were _tiny. _Tiny, grubby, thin, and wary-looking as a line of ragged rabbits. Everything about them hinted that the universe at large had been using them as a kicking ball, in at least two cases since the day they were born.

He cast a worried glance at the second-smallest of the bunch, a pale-haired child of indeterminate gender who apparently had a second head sticking out from between its skinny shoulder-blades. The child caught him looking, scowled, and made an obscene gesture at him.

Mizumomo cuffed the child in question so hard it nearly fell over. "I warned you, you evil little shit, mind your manners, or so help me I'll rip that finger off and make you eat it. Much good would it do us both. Now apologize to the corpsefucker."

"Sorry, corpsefucker," the child muttered through chapped lips, although rebellion still gleamed in its one un-bang-covered eye. Mizumomo cuffed it again, lightly, and turned to the assembly.

"Ladies, gentlemen, none of the above: Orochimaru's Four. Some of you've met. Violent little fuckers to a man..." The tiny redhead in an oversized hat pulled up the brim and hissed dissent. Mizumomo cuffed the hat back down over its eyes and idly added "...and a woman, but they haven't got the experience they'll need. So I brought them along for this one, so's they can watch the senior ops cut some throats. The jinchuuriki might be a bit much but they'll run into that shit eventually, so why not?"

"And supposing we don't _want _your stinking brats running around underfoot, Tokage?" Houki snapped.

"You can suck it up, is what you can do," Mizumomo said mildly. "If they're to be proper Sound ninja, much less the old serpent's bodyguard, they'll need field experience before they can move on to squad and solo missions." Houki opened his mouth to protest again, then shut it quickly when Mizumomo turned on him, the corners of her eyes curving up ominously. It was worse, Ijou reflected from the sidelines, when you couldn't tell if she was smiling or baring her teeth behind that mask. "And don't think that if I hear from your mouth again, Houki, the throat they watch getting cut won't be yours. You've been on my nerves for a while, and you're not so valuable a jounin as you can't be replaced."

Ijou tried not to be amused when the first thing Houki did was look at Hirune and Umebogyo for support. None was forthcoming. Eventually he just assumed a sneering I-don't-give-a-shit expression and and ducked out of the tent without another word.

Mimiko hadn't stopped smiling the entire time. "Is that all? Then I'll be off. For my lord Orochimaru's sake, I sincerely hope your darling little children don't fall off a cliff, or something equally incompetent."

"_Bite me, you old bitch," _growled the hat-wearing child ferociously, before ducking down in apparently anticipation of a blow. But Mizumomo made no move, instead locking gazes—or at least, intent, because Mimiko had no gaze to spare—with the older woman, and speaking surprisingly quietly.

"You hope? Hope my pock-riddled ass. Get yourself out of here before I tear your painted head off."

Mimiko tittered again, very softly and quite poisonously. "My, so defensive. Umebogyo-san, Ijou-kun, Hirune-san." And she left the tent with a faint flutter of silk.

Ijou became aware that the smallest of the children, a boy with dark skin and his hair up in a haphazard ponytail, had reached over and was tugging on the biggest boy's arm, whispering to him.

"...push_her _off a cliff? I mean, Zaku-nii'd be pissed but he'd get over it..."

"Absolutely not," hissed the bigger boy, sounding strained. Something about his tone rang of being, unfortunately, the thankless Responsible One. "She may be a nasty old crone but she's a very valuable shinobi, and she _did _teach Tayuya and Sakon some techniques..."

Mizumomo reached out absently and cuffed the smaller boy, giving the bigger one a warning prod with her foot as she did. And then she turned on Ijou. "Oi, corpsefucker, which division are you with?"

"My name is not 'corpsefucker', it is Sataki Ijou, and I am considered a floating agent."

"You mean you're too much of a pain for one division to take command of." She pinned him with a bleak gaze, which curved oddly. That smile-or-snarl thing again. "Good. I was worried you didn't have any nuts. Hey, Umebogyo, unless you want this one up 'til the fighting starts, I'll have him along with me and the brats."

"Excuse me, but I never--!"

"Done," Umebogyo said absently, lighting his pipe. "And don't argue, boyo, you might find this enlightenin'."

"But--!"

"Which part of 'don't argue' didn't ye hear?"

Ijou gnawed his lip in twitching disapproval. As pitiful as they looked, traipsing around with a pack of potentially violent small children and a tower of foul manners in female form had not been in his itinerary, and that itinerary had been handed down by Orochimaru himself...

And then he became aware of small voices holding a whispered conversation behind Mizumomo's back.

"_...thought he looked kinda nice, you know? Um, I mean, for a medic."_

"_Don't kid yourself," _muttered the presumably-girl in the large hat, her mouth twisted in a bitter line._"None of the adults ever wants us. Freak show, remember?"_

"_...oh. Yeah." _The biggest boy fell silent again.

Ijou kicked himself mentally for a few seconds, then raised a hand and employed something like a salute towards Mizumomo, who eyed him. "Ah...give me fifteen minutes to get my things. I'll come with you as long as we can circle back and rejoin the main body prior to the ambush."

"That's the plan, Sataki. Get your gear."

* * *

Mizumomo sent the Four outside, so she and Umebogyo were left alone in the tent, Hirune having simply walked out unnoticed. 

"Sataki Ijou, huh? Not bad, for a corpsefucker."

"Not necessarily a corpsefucker, neither."

"Just a medic? I could have sworn, the way he was watching things go on...he looked like he had the Yakushi's taint on him."

"Not hardly. He just...watches things. No idea what he did before, but he's surprisin' inoffensive. Good support, but some in the divisions don't like people who just watch things."

"Good. I need a watcher. In point of fact, need three or four extra bodies on hand to keep an eye on those brats, truth be told, especially now they've had the Seal on them. And there's only so long I can manage _that._"

* * *

"If he does that stupid clicking thing with his puppet again, Baki-sensei, may I throw him out of the carriage?" 

Baki of the wind blades, a man known for his competence, stamina, ruthless nature, and general unflappability even among Sand shinobi, was reaching the end of his considerable patience. Four more years, he thought grimly as Kankuro yelled a protest and tried to hit Snotface, a.k.a his older sister Temari. Four more years until Gaara is old enough to take the chuunin examination—damn those bleeding-hearts and their new regulations—and until then, Baki was in charge of teaching Suna's wide and dangerous skill set to the Kazekage's offspring.

Two of whom were merely a nuisance at this stage. The third...

Baki shot a glance over his shoulder at the second caravan, the one occupying the trip's double set of loose cannons. This was the very first mission Gaara was being allowed out on after the, hm,_incident _with Yashamaru, and the Yondaime Kazekage had been adamant there be no irregularities.

Baki was a model shinobi, so he didn't ask if his lord would like him to make it rain pigs in the desert and force the sun to shine at midnight as well.

He turned his attention back to the two little nuisances in his carriage, and was gratified to see that Temari had wrestled her brother into submission with a combination of skill and dirty pool. She was now sitting on him as he whined loudly.

"You cheated, dammit!"

"Ninja," Temari said mildly, buffing her nails on her dress with exaggerated smugness.

"'M gonna _get _you for this," Kankuro growled at her, trying to squirm out from under his rather smaller sister and failing miserably.

The daimyo's retainer, who'd been studiously engrossed in a newspaper, looked up, chuckled softly, and returned to the business section. Apparently this gave Kankuro impetus to roll Temari off himself and retire to the corner of the carriage to sulk and plot revenge.

Baki decided that there was likely to be peace for the next few moments, so he slipped out of the carriage and onto the roof, jumping easily to the one behind. The two chuunin guarding the second carriage stood aside for him, clearly relieved, as he slipped down into the carriage proper with considerably more caution.

Gaara stared up at him for a few long seconds, the sand poised to strike, before deciding that Baki clearly wasn't worth the effort and stowing it back in his gourd.

The other denizen of the carriage was nowhere to be seen.

Baki looked for signs of blood on the walls or floor, trying to remain composed. "Gaara, did you kill...?"

"That woman? No. She just left."

"...I see." Gaara did not lie. If he didn't wish to tell you something, he simply didn't bother to speak, and pressing him was liable to send him into what the Kazekage euphemistically referred to as a "state". Gaara told you the cold truth, or nothing at all. A peculiar measure, Baku thought as he turned to leave, or perhaps perfectly appropriate for a boy who'd been lied to all his short life.

Behind him, Gaara said softly, "I don't like her."

Baki paused in the doorway. Rui was unstable, of course, but had she actually been insane enough to _antagonize…_?

"She said she didn't mind me. She said she liked people who brought such glorious death." Gaara's small brow furrowed, contorting the ironic kanji tattooed there. "She wasn't afraid of me."

"She's..." Baki searched for a word that hadn't been applied to Gaara recently, that wouldn't lose him his other eye. "She's disturbed. And not very intelligent."

"If you send her back here, I'll _make _her afraid of me."

Baki only nodded before leaving. Enough time spent in close quarters with Gaara made him antsy.

One of the jounin from the rear carriage caught him on the way to the lead. "Ah, sir...Taruru Rui has moved to the back carrier with the support chuunin and special jounin, sir."

"Oh?"

"She's making them nervous, sir. And she smells like bleach."

"Would you rather I send Gaara back, then?"

The jounin froze in horror, staring at Baki's face, searching for signs that it was a joke. Baki kept his expression immobile. It was only half a joke. Finally, the jounin murmured "no, sir" and slunk off.

Baki returned just in time to catch Temari poking her head outside, looking at the middle carriage with something half fear and half concern.

"Baki-sensei? You think he—I mean, Gaara gets travel-sick?"

"Don't think about it," he told her tersely, wishing he didn't have to.

* * *

TBC 


	2. Chapter 2

**Warmongers (part 2 of...um)**

* * *

"'Beware the Walkin' Dude'? The hell...?"

Ijou looked over from his blanket roll at Tayuya, the only girl among Mizumomo's "brats"; she was peering intently at the graffiti-marked wanderer's rock they'd chosen as a camp spot, an egg-shaped relic that marked the centre of a deep depression in the rocky desert landscape. He was glad he'd taken a moment to ask before they'd set out: after several minutes of laughing at him, the children had calmed down enough to pointedly give him not only gender but names as well. The entire time they'd been making their way to the rock, there were periodic fits of giggling from the smallest boy, Kidoumaru, the one with the extra arms, that not even cuffing by Mizumomo could stop.

"_He thought you were a girl…__"_

"_Shut up!"_

"_Well, you are pretty..."_

"_I said shut up or I'm gonna come over an' beat your head in!"_

"_Yeah? Try it!"_

The first time Ijou pried Kidoumaru and Sakon apart, he'd been quite positive the two of them were trying to kill each other. By the third repeat performance from various members of the group, he'd realized that this was a combination of their peculiar concept of fun and frequent checks on who was higher up on the pecking order. From the number of fights won versus lost, Ijou was inclined to think it was Tayuya, but Jiroubou never seemed to participate, so perhaps he was already secure by way of physical strength...?

Except that Ijou quickly took note that the smaller three kids prodded, punched, climbed on, and dragged Jiroubou wherever and whenever they pleased, and he usually gave in with very minimal complaint. Ijou's late anthropologist father would have had fun with this.

"Hey, the old lady's gone off to pee in the bushes or somethin', what're you askin' her for?"

"'Cause it says on the rock "Beware the Walkin' Dude" and none of you dickweeds know how come, that's why."

"Tayuya, _language!"_

"I know who the Walkin' Dude is!"

"…liar."

"No, I'm serious, he's one of those guys where like you say his name three times in front of a mirror an' then he comes an' rips your guts out an' eats 'em, right? Like in front of you."

"You're full of crap, Kidoumaru."

"What, you don't believe me? Let's try it!"

"Don't look so happy about eating guts, it's fuckin' creepy."

"What'sa matter, Tayuya, you scared to try it?"

"Me? _Me? I'm _scared of ghosts? I'll fucking summon a gaki an' we'll _see_ who's scared of ghosts, shithead!"

Ijou laid out his bedroll and hoped the argument would be over soon.

"Hey, corpsefucker?"

He looked up to find a pale face peering at him through paler bangs, over top of a boulder. "...Sakon? You can call me Sataki-sensei. It's more accurate and less obscene."

"'Kay corpsefucker," Sakon said, waving the words away absently. Ijou wrinkled his nose: the boy obviously didn't let go of ideas easily. "Betcha know who the Walkin' Dude is, right? Corpsefuckers know that kind of stuff."

"He's some kind of Westerland myth, a demon who takes human form and tempts mortals...they have rather different ideas of demons in the West, you understand?"

"Oh yeah," Sakon snorted, even though he clearly didn't. By this time, the other three had assembled and were listening to Ijou with interest. Kidoumaru crowed.

"See, see? I told ya. C'mon, let's get a mirror an' try it!"

Distressingly, Tayuya seemed to be seriously considering the idea. Ijou found himself deeply relieved when Mizumomo arrived moments later, scratching herself in a most unladylike manner and with a sack slung over her shoulder. The sack was dripping red.

"Oi, soup's up, stinkin' brats!"

What followed, to Ijou's mind, was very instructive. There was a slight rush on the older woman and what proved to be, on de-sacking, a dead deer, but the four children managed to compose themselves after a few moments and started in on what were apparently allotted tasks: wood-gathering, carefully building a smokeless fire, and in the case of Jiroubou and Sakon, cheerfully skinning and jointing the deer under Mizumomo's foul-mouthed direction.

Ijou watched, not interfering and asking nothing—he had his own food stored with his medical kit, freeze-dried and tasteless though it was. His first faint human impulse of pity towards the so-called Sound Four had worn away considerably, to be replaced by bewilderment and vaguely academic concern.

He'd never been around children for prolonged periods, even as a child himself, aside from occasional messy pediatric forays into piecing together destroyed, empty-eyed little proto-humans heartbeats away from giving up on life. Those cases had taught him to scale back his emotions so as to perform his job competently. If the child thought of him as a cold bastard, well then at least he lived to think so.

And these ones didn't need his pity. They clung ferociously to life like so many juvenile rats, fiercely determined to survive...and despite his earlier assessment of Tokage Mizumomo's treatment of them as nigh-abusive...

"I said don't eat that bit, dammit! 'Else we'll be up all night listening to you puking." Sakon stuck his tongue out at his huge teacher and got his ear boxed for it. "Idiot! I mean it's practically poison!"

"Sakon can eat just about anything, though," Kidoumaru pointed out around a messy mouthful of half-charred veal.

"Just because he _can _doesn't mean he should. You want to carry him around tomorrow, brat? Be my guest. Jiroubou, you fucking _wait _for your seconds or get your ass kicked, got it? And put that finger down or you lose it, Tayuya."

They settled down, eventually. They ate, washed (at Mizumomo's voluble insistence), and curled up in worn sleeping bags tucked together, soon to fall asleep with surprising peace. Then, as soon as Mizumomo's back was turned, Tayuya went up on one elbow and tried to subtly cover Jiroubou's head with dirt.

"_I see what you're doing__ there, you little shit."_

Ijou was fairly sure he had never seen a little girl drop down so fast, nor snore so enthusiastically. After a time, the noises evened out into the sound of natural sleep.

He turned to look at Mizumomo's hulking back.

"So I bet you're wondering why I asked for _your _company, corpsefucker."

Ijou made a face and scooted over so that he was level with the huge woman, but out of arms-reach. "I was going to enquire as to that, yes. Shouldn't you keep your voice down a bit?"

"Why? There's not a breathin' thing in this area, I checked…what, you mean because of the brats? Fuck that. They aren't infants."

"They aren't particularly far from it," Ijou pointed out, trying to keep the annoyance out of his voice. To his surprise, she...smiled, or what he was coming to think of as a smile above the mask, anyway. The wrinkles seemed to go differently when she was shouting or glaring.

"You don't know shit about what the giant snake's aiming for with them, do you?"

Ijou opened his mouth, shut it, and laced his fingers together, waiting. After a moment, Mizumomo rose silently and gestured at him to come along. Curious, he followed her back to the line of sleeping children; a curt motion of her hand kept him silent and told him to watch.

After several long minutes, Sakon whimpered in his sleep and rolled over, the motion moving his long bangs around and baring his forehead just above the eyebrow.

The area was livid, and growing more so before Ijou's eyes. As he watched, something seemed to be crawling to the surface, resolving itself steadily into three small black dots...

...and an arm that wasn't one of Sakon's wrapped around the small boy's chest. As Ijou watched in surprise and fascination, an entirely new medical phenomenon presented itself; the "second head" detached itself and the better part of a separate torso from Sakon's body, moving as if to embrace its carrier.

It looked up at Ijou, and black eyes glinted as the second boy bridled back with a snarl. Mizumomo swept down into a crouch and prodded him right between those eyes.

"_Ow! _...old lady?"

"No, it's the fucking Tanabata fairy, who's it look like?"

The second head (Ijou couldn't stop thinking of the new boy as such) turned a flinty gaze on him. "So who's this shit and why's he watchin' us sleep?"

"He's makin' sure you brats aren't gonna drop dead of Ebola, lazy idiot. He's medical corps."

"What, like Kabuto?" The child growled, suspicion in every line of his body.

"_Not _like Kabuto," Ijou let him know quite emphatically. "I'm a field specialist with...one or two sidelines."

"No corpsefucking?"

"Certainly not. And what Kabuto and Orochimaru-sama are attempting to accomplish isn't actually..."

"Damn right. Orochimaru-sama doesn't corpsefuck," the boy said with all the certainty of the utterly wrong. He seemed to have reached some sort of conclusion, because after a moment's further suspicious study he nodded curtly to Ijou. "I'm Ukon. I guess if the old bat says you're alright then that's fine, but don't go around starin' at me and my brother anymore like it's some kinda peep show or I'll kick your ass."

"That's...understandable, I suppose...so are you the older or younger brother?"

"The older, of _course." _Ukon rolled his eyes as if he'd just been asked whether gravity meant things fell upwards. He got another poke in the forehead for his troubles.

"Settle your brother and go back to sleep, you little bastard."

"Yeah, yeah...shouldn't you be getting your midnight snack of puppies or somethin'?"

"Mouthy little shits," Mizumomo said with an apparent grim smile as they moved away, "but at least they mind their Ps and Qs where Orochimaru-sama's concerned. There's sense in there somewhere."

"Yes, I can see that," Ijou muttered, preoccupied with a number of things. "What they were doing with their bodies, that cellular fusion and division...a bloodline limit?"

"The last one of type, as far as we know," Mizumomo replied, and there was something rather peculiar in her voice that got his attention fully. She caught him looking and shrugged. "Well, you wanna lay odds on chances of survival for a Mist clan that's known for producing people who can sashay into your body like it's a fuckin' public washroom and tie your intestines in knots for laughs? Not to mention all the inbreeding goin' on does weird things to the brain after a few generations. They got an 'off' switch somewhere, those two, but it's fucking hard to find at the best of times."

"...I see."

"Trust me, corpsefucker, you don't."

"Genefucker."

"Huh?"

"I'm...mainly a field specialist, but I do know something about genetic manipulation. Ah. Enzymes. You could say it was, ahah, hereditary, my mother was one of our nation's foremost experts in it, especially the pediatric application thereof. I picked up on a bit of it."

There was a pointed silence. Ijou could see the gears going behind Mizumomo's pale eyes, and wondered if he was going to suddenly lose his head once she reached the conclusion...

"...so. You're the one who fine-tuned that Juugo's little problem."

"Well...I stabilized it for use on adults," Ijou said quietly. "I wasn't aware that he would..."

"If the next thing you tell me is some variation on "I didn't know" or "if I'd known, I wouldn't have done it", I'm gonna rip your fucking arms off and beat you to death with 'em."

He wished she hadn't sounded so very matter-of-fact about it. But not surprised...

"You knew?"

"I took a shot in the dark. Heard through the grape vine that the guy who performed the only successful extraction, the one that allowed Orochimaru-sama to subdue that little terror in the first place and start building the base compound for the curse seal, was some field type who was good at watching people and staying alive, and that he'd managed by piecing together existing reports and predicting what was liable to set the kid off and when."

"...I brought a budgie in with me. He calmed right down, didn't even notice when I took blood and tissue samples. My only mistake was when he begged me to take it away with me when I left in case he "went wrong" and harmed it; I did as he asked, and it caused exactly what he was afraid of. The guards...weren't fast enough."

"And don't start with me on that guilt shit. If you're not fast enough, you die, it's that simple." He watched as her gaze briefly strayed back to the four (five?) sleeping forms on the ground. "Very simple."

"...I don't know what harm it's going to do to them. I don't know exactly what Orochimaru-sama has adjusted it into, but the death rate from application alone..."

"I _know, _fucker. Fucking can it before I kill you right here."

For all her words, he knew he'd lost her attention completely now, but there was one last question he couldn't help but ask.

"I'm...going to assume you've been their sensei since before they had, um, those applied. Where you consulted when...?"

"No," Mizumomo said, very softly, and Ijou turned quickly and made his way back to his own sleeping back in silence, because the threat of death was lurking in the lack of harmonics in that 'no', more firmly than it had in all her casual threats of maiming and murder.

He looked back at her once when he was ensconced, a silent hulking figure within darting distance of her students, children who thought of themselves as hardened killers. Watching them.

* * *

"You know, Deidara, I think you're hitting every fucking pocket of turbulence you can on _purpose, _seriously."

Late of Rock and newly of the Akatsuki, the terrorist sculptor Deidara grinned openly. He'd had misgivings about all this, mainly due to his induction by the ever-charming Uchiha Itachi (his hand-teeth ground together just thinking the bastard's _name_), but he was starting to find there were aspects of belonging to the order of S-ranked nuke-nin that were rather fun. Leader-sama had a stick up his ass about almost everything, of course, but once you knew what was likely to set him or the lovely and totally facially immobile Konan off, there was a surprising amount of fun you could have while still directing it towards the goal of scouting out and laying hands on the nine Tailed Beasts.

Messing with the new guy was minor entertainment by comparison, but amusing nonetheless. It especially tickled Deidara that he had seniority by dint of membership length over Hidan, who was physically older than him by about seven years and chronologically by about fifty, yet behaved like every thirteen-year-old _poseur _Deidara had ever run across and subsequently blown up.

Of course, blowing Hidan up wasn't an option, because in all likelihood the bits would scrape themselves together and then get off on giving him a right mother of a kicking for his troubles.

"Maybe you'd like to walk instead, yeah? We'll only miss our rendezvous with that Sand caravan by about a day and a half that way."

Hidan told him to go do a number of things that were physiologically impossible, finishing up with "Cut the fucking comedy routine and fly your damn pigeon right. I swear if that dumb bastard hadn't stuck us together on this shitty mission I'd sacrifice your hedonistic ass to Jashin-sama so fast what's left of your head would spin."

"I'm quaking in my spats, un." Now, if it had been Kakuzu, Deidara might well have worried about a follow-through on the threat, but for all Hidan's bitching he was positively lazy unless the bloodlust was on him or the subject at hand was a religious debate. He could have gotten someone better for the mission—Sasori came to mind, ever since that snaky prick Orochimaru had hoofed it Deidara had been dying to partner up with the notorious master of kugutsu and the only other person in the Akatsuki who had a flaming clue about the arts, but Leader-sama had been merrily pawning him off on everyone _but _Sasori—but it also could have been rather worse. Kakuzu, of course, came to mind, he was already in the man's bad books for borrowing out of the petty cash for a new set of chisels...and of course that damn Itachi.

"This fucking landscape is boring as hell." Oh, well, there you go, Hidan had already found something else to gripe about. "Fucking flat shit with absolutely no goddamn topiary."

"I had no idea you were into horticulture, Hidan, yeah."

"Fuck no. It's just better to hang corpses off trees or nail them to a cliff face, I hate just leaving 'em lying around in the dirt." Hidan turned from where he was seated and smirked at Deidara. "Waste of good advertising for Jashin, you might say."

"Have you ever considered a billboard? Or maybe some kind of public performance piece, yeah? I'd do one for fifty ryou in a nice, crowded town..."

"Hmm...tempting, but no, you're a godless heathen, that kind of thing's gotta come from the true believer, seriously. By the way, this jinchuuriki we're scouting out, what's it look like?"

Deidara snorted disgustedly. "Weren't you _listening?"_

"Leader-sama's voice grates on my ears. I just caught that it was the Ichibi, then I got bored and started reciting scripture to myself to pass the time."

If _that _was a side-effect of immortality, you could keep it, Deidara thought, rolling his eyes. "It's a new one, Sand just sealed it into some kid, yeah."

"Feh. I hate kids."

"Oh?" You didn't normally make the cut for the Akatsuki without a healthy dose of misanthropy into the bargain, and Deidara wasn't without a general lack of concern for his fellow human beings, but not being very far from a kid himself, he was rather fond of them. They made lots of noise, they were easily impressed, especially by things that went "boom", and besides which, he credited babysitting his younger cousins on his aunt's behalf with his creating of his first-ever batch of C1, made with enthusiastic help from said cousins in his uncle's private lab. As such, he'd been planning to take the Ichibi's jinchuuriki out as quickly and painlessly as possible, for preference without the kid's knowing in advance what was going to happen to it.

"They smell funny. And they ask _really _stupid questions at the worst possible times." Deidara ran head-on into Hidan's accusing glare, and bristled visibly, previous philanthropy forgotten.

"You calling me a _kid, _yeah?"

"From where I sit, yeah, Deidara-_chan_," Hidan drawled, smirking nastily.

Deidara deliberately aimed for a nice, big pocket of turbulence.

* * *

Gaara unbuttoned the corner of the heavy, white cloth shielding the carriage interior from the desert wind and the sand. He wasn't afraid of getting a face full of flying grit. Let everyone else worry about that. The sand was _his._

And possibly _its, _too, but the line was beginning to blur in his mind.

Something was on the roof of the carriage, walking more clumsily than the silent-footed Sand jounin. The sand whirled and coiled about him as he prepared to crush and maim if the slightest hint of a threat arose...

Something yellow was dropped through the covered flap on the roof, the flap ostensibly there to make the stifling carriage interior less so. It was followed by something triangular and plastic. The clumsy walker turned and hurried back the way they had come.

Gaara stared. No matter how much his urges came and went, he wasn't so far gone that he was liable to attack the banana that had landed on the floor in front of him. But

_They toss __in food as if to a beast in a cage, _he/it thought, cold coils of rage constricting his throat. _Monster monster monster..._

_Wait...bananas. Rice. Apples. Tea. Because the carriage is bouncing around..._

Gaara picked up the banana and the plastic pink box used for holding the shape of the onigiri. Pink had to be Temari's, because their father and Kazekage's household staff were still giving her pink things and frillies no matter how hard she tried to lose them all later. And Temari wasn't fond of bananas, but Kankuro was...

_Monster__ freak monster, _he/it thought, and suddenly all Gaara could see was Yashamaru's smiling face.

The rage constricted his throat so tightly he could barely breathe.

* * *

TBC...

_**A/N: I honestly have no idea how the Akatsuki muscled their way in, but there you go. Thanks to Lellian for an awesome review; go read her "Secondhand Faith", which is not only a joy for the Sound fan (actually, to a fan of **_**any _village_) **_**but most excellently written and characterized.**_

_**...and for the record, the graffiti on the wanderer's rock includes such topical gems as "De Chelonian Mobile" and "Gods Do It In Mysterious Ways". Patently ridiculous, and of course there'll be no more of it in the rest of the fanfic.**_

* * *


End file.
